The road to the Motorcycle license (From Dreams, Thoughts, Experiences)

It is really an interesting experience if you plan to take a driving license without the aid of the driving school. Though I took my LMV license through a driving school, I decided to take the motorcycle one on-my- own. If you are on-your-own, there are quite a number of privileges that you have to forsake. You can avoid spending a considerable number of days (not hours!) at the Transport Bhavan (the dirty, dingy complex that is office to the RTO); you can bypass the extremely long queue (so long that it starts at the counter, runs right across the hall, down the stairs to some corner in the storey below); you can avoid the innumerable shuttles between home and the CALLS counter (Computer Aided Learner’s Licensing System) each time the MVI (Motor Vehicle Inspector) rejects your application (simply because no one except the driving-school-guys know how to fill the application form and all that goes with it); in short, a myriad inconveniences.

Unfortunately, I had to go through all this drama just to get a test date. Again you miss out a lot of leniencies on the day of the actual driving test. You will certainly miss the services of the M-80 Major, the ubiquitous milkman-motorcycle which every driving school possesses. With its wonderful maneuverability, it is a boon for anyone taking the figure-8 motorcycle test. These driving school guys alter the M-80 to such an extent that you don’t even have to touch the clutch! In case of the LMV H-test, you will have to miss out on the algorithm these guys have created to crack the H! Follow the algorithm and each time you reach a strategic point of the H (conveniently marked out by heaped leaves and lines scuffed on the ground), you just have to turn the steering wheel the prescribed number of times and so on until you are magically through the H.

In case you are shrewd enough, you can advantageously use the leaf-heaps these guys use to help their clients identify strategic points on the test track and more importantly that cigarette carton resting on that strategic rod in the H-test. Overhearing the instructions these guys give to their clients can give you a wealth of information without which you would cut a sorry figure in front of those MVIs. Those viva-voce questions, the hand signals, the live demonstrations …. I grabbed them with both hands and came out in flying colors. I owe a large portion of my success in the yesterday’s on-my-own motorcycle test to these driving school guys!

Savouring the last Souring vacation (From Dreams, Thoughts, Experiences)

I have had nothing to do except chill out for the past few days! Isn't that testimony enough for the fact I am on a vacation? The hectic days of final year at college are over. The days where I slog and sweat at work are yet to come. Doesn't that allude to the fact that this is the last vacation for a long long time? That remaining so, recall the fact that familiarity breeds contempt and that even elixir in excess is real bad!

What is the ideal length of a vacation that one can enjoy to the fullest? For some guys at college, this last vacation was as short as 15 days. If you are planning on chilling out for a few days after those demanding last days at college, enjoying your mother's food and the delightful comforts of your cozy home, hanging out with friends - killing time, cracking jokes, window shopping and what not? You even have ample time to go on a pilgrimage(??) or an all-India tour!

Not before long, you finally realize that your vacation has come to an end and you are engaged in a frantic shopping spree to buy all those necessities, visiting relatives and seeking out their blessings before finally embarking on the 'epic' journey to work, visiting temples and praying for good luck ... thousands of things to do in a very short time!

One of my friends was gifted so short a vacation that he got to enjoy only the second busy half of the it, so much so that some of us (a group of 4) got an appointment to meet him only after deliberations stretching over two days! Most other guys got a decent vacation of a month and a half and have took off to work. What about me? This is day 70 of the 3 month long vacation. Yep, three months! I have done all those things that I have mentioned people do in their vacation, yet this one doesn't seem to end! I feel like a thirsty wanderer searching for an water in the middle of a desert, getting fooled every now and then by a mirage. All I yearn for is something interesting to keep me occupied!

It seems I have exhausted all the options. Lets see ... The first few days were spent in planning and executing a very enchanting foray into Wayanad, an ideal ecotourism destination nestled among the mighty western ghats that runs along the west coast of peninusular India. The purple patch threatened to end with this, but I deftly extended it to a few more days by going on a tour to friends' houses all along the length and breadth of God's own country. By this time my brother had arrived on his somewhat-long vacation. With two computers at home and lots of games waiting to be played, it turned out to be an extension of those idle college days where I used to play computer games day in and day out! A host of other interesting activities went on other than this and I was really enjoying.

That's when we (me, brother and parents) embarked on a North India tour extending from the borders of Pakistan at Wagah(Amritsar) to the thronging devotees on the holy banks of the sacred Ganges at Rishikesh and Haridwar, from sylvan Mussoorie and the peaceful Doon valley to the busting National capital ... We missed out on the last leg though, involving the pink city and the world wonder, due to a minor mishap in Delhi. The dream run ended shortly and it was up to me and my brother to make amends.

I really felt the pinch when my brother's long vacation came to a screeching halt a few days down the line. I was forced to turn my attention to hobbies that I had put in the cellar for the past four years ... reading, blogging, surfing and the like. Each passing hour seems like a day. I have even started attending those receptions and marriages of people whom I didn't know but people who knew me, a thing I have always abstained from all my life! With each passing minute this vacation which I thought I would savour is getting more and more sour. It is turning out to be a really long, Souring last vacation!

A bit of Autobiography (From Raptures about the Night Sky)

My tryst with the night-sky started way back, when I was a child fascinated by the heavens above. I wanted to know more about them, but the school textbooks had too few information to offer. As I grew up, I learnt from my textbooks that one can see planets with the naked eye and that each had its own unique characteristics, but no one told me where to look out for them in the sky. Years passed by with me continuing to be a 'frog in the well' and it was up to occasional articles in the newspaper to rekindle my interest in astronomy.

Notable among these were the Shoemaker Levy comet crashing into Jupiter in 1994, the appearance of comet Hale Bopp in 1995, and the outburst in Leonid meteor shower activity in 1998. I still remember 1994, when I was in the fourth standard. Rumors spread in the class room that the world was going to end because of a huge object going to hit the earth and so on (In connection with the Shoemaker Levy incident).

Once in a while there would be a live telecast of a solar eclipse on the TV. My mother was too scared and superstitious to let me outdoors when the eclipse was going on, preventing me from experimenting with the ideas put forward by the TV guys to watch the eclipse. My mother used to say that food would turn to poison when the eclipse was going on and we were not allowed to eat anything. The house would be cleaned, special prayers and ceremonies (pujas) would be conducted.

A breakthrough finally manifested itself in the form of starcharts that appeared every month in the Hindu newspaper. It was just a small unclear picture with no instructions and hence the misfortune continued. The jinx was finally broken when I teamed up with my friend, Gokul in my ninth standard or so (I don't remember exactly). He was also greatly interested in Astronomy and had read some books and downloaded a starchart generating software called Starcalc which I use even to this day. We spent a lot of time together observing the heavens and discussing astronomy among other things. We used to print starcharts and go to the observatory hill in Trivandrum.

The observatory had two old but large telescopes with which we were able to take our first magnified glimpse at the planets. We could see the polar caps of Mars, the rings of Saturn, the satellites and the dust band of Jupiter, the majestic full moon and the spectacular Orion nebula. We made friends with the observatory chairman and we had a lot of discussion going on. All these experiences satisfied the thirst that has long been unquenched.

Meanwhile, I attended a workshop called 'Red rover goes to Mars Project' at the Trivandrum planetarium. It was about selecting a few students to NASA for working on the Red rover project. It was a bit advanced for my standard, but I was still fascinated. I took home whatever I could fathom.

During the whole of my eleventh standard, I spend many of my evenings clinging onto a home made telescope, inspired by the telescope making workshop conducted by the Trivandrum planetarium. My telescope had a 100 cm focal length, 3" aperture convex lens as objective and a 20X eyepiece. I used an indigenous mount made from the remains of an old table-fan and I was proud of my telescope. Though there was significant chromatic aberration, I could see the Orion nebula as a cloud, an enlarged moon and the satellites of Jupiter as tiny dots if not anything else.

We came to know about the Astronomy Olympiad and we decided to have a go at it. By then I had become an avid reader and used my father's library to get books. He works at the Indian Space Research Organization and it has the finest technical library in all of India. I cleared the rounds until I finally qualified to appear in the National Astronomy Olympiad. It was to be preceded by a 10 day camp in Mumbai at the Nehru Science Centre. My home is some 1500 km away and I had fallen sick also which finally prevented me from attending the camp.

We attempted to organize an Astronomy club at school called SciQuest, the brainchild of me and Gokul. Most of my classmates attended our first get together, but they were there more because of their friendship with us rather than interest in Astronomy. This was pretty clear when not even a soul turned up for the second meeting at our favorite observatory. What a disappointment!

I was so frustrated that I was not able to attend the Olympiad that I parted ways with Astronomy (temporarily) but it was the busy academic schedule that played spoilsport. Finally I got into college and there again I was pressed for time. I failed again in an attempt to create Astronomy awareness at college, this time me being the culprit, I simply couldn't find time! (Oh my God, I should have). The plan that failed was to create a Special Interest Group (SiG) in Astronomy under the aegis of the IEEE. I feel final year was too late to start such an endeavor. Nevertheless, I spent quite sometime in browsing information on Astronomy, occasional stargazing outings and Meteor shower observations. I had made it a point not to miss the wondrous meteor showers. I would tell my friends well in advance and we would head to the college's Open Air Theatre(OAT). What an experience we had!

During my college days I started a community in the social networking site, Orkut called 'Stargazing and the Nightsky'. It has 276 members as of now from different parts of the world and I am glad that they all joined on their own accord without me sending out a single invitation! It was my attempt at not losing touch with astronomy. Now that I have passed out of college and plan to do something new, I have decided to start this stargazing blog. I is my hope that this blog symbolizes my comeback to Astronomy and that I can spare enough time from my work schedule to pursue amateur astronomy with renewed zeal.

Clear Skies!